Table Of Content

How mothers of deaf children cope with conflict Tânia Gastão Saliés Department of Language Studies State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ) [email protected] Melissa França Batista Clinic for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) [email protected] 2020 Correspondence should be sent to the first author 2 Abstract This paper case-studies how three hearing mothers make sense of their own and their deaf children's experiences from a view of discourse as a social practice. For this purpose, it examines how participating mothers represent themselves and their children in discourse by looking at the frames and footings that emerge from their relationship with each other and with their utterances and by associating findings with the socio-cultural context at large. The analysis indicates that the mothers represent themselves as “pro-active” and “caring” mothers as well as “reluctant” to accept their children’s deafness. Reported speech was the main strategy used in talk to solve conflicting situations and avoid confronting the lack of acceptance of their children’s deafness. Key-words: discursive representations; frames; footings; deafness; reported speech. Introduction Parents of deaf1 children undergo considerable stress from the moment they learn that their children are deaf. They not only face special challenges to relate to their children but also need to dedicate a significant amount of time, money, patience, and other resources to raise and educate their children. Because most parents do not share the linguistic resources necessary to engage in successful interaction with their deaf children, they are constantly assaulted by demands, questions, decisions beyond their knowledge and skills. Not surprisingly, parental depression and feelings of inadequacy and frustration over their children’s development and future education are common (cf. Kushalnagar et al., 2007; Archibold et al., 2008; Weisel, Most and Michael, 2007). This article case-studies the talk of three mothers who face similar 3 challenges as they trade experiences in a Support Group for Mutual Aid. The Group was created by the Clinic for the Deaf and Hearing-impaired of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Medical School for parents of deaf children under the Clinic’s care. Its objective is to maximize parents’ knowledge of deafness as well as make them aware of available options to educate and relate to their children and the health and education professionals in charge of their children’s development. To do so, we look at contextual cues to shifting frames and footings and at a particular discourse strategy selected by the mothers to cope with their conflicts: reported speech. Although some previous studies have addressed hearing parents’ views of their children’s deafness and cochlear implantation (Kushalnagar et al., 2007; Archbold et al., 2008; Jackson, Traub and Turnbull, 2008), none of them examined parents’ discourse as indexes to discursive representations and associated findings to the socio-cultural context. While Kushalnagar et al. obtained measures of parental distress over deaf children’s adaptability to cochlear implantation, Archbold et al. administered a questionnaire to access parents’ perceptions of the implants. Jackson, Traub, and Turnbull, for their turn, took a qualitative approach to analyze the perceptions and experiences of nine parents of deaf children. Their analyses focused on themes in the families’ experiences, their reactions to diagnosis, and their decision-making process. A close analysis of the parents’ discourses has not been undertaken. At the same time, results provided by these studies underscore the importance of a family-centered program in the early communication and language development of the deaf. According to them, deaf children only experiment with, life and get to know what their mothers allow. 4 Conceptual Framework One of the premises that guide this study is that discourse is not only a mode of action but also a way of being acted upon (Fairclough, 1989; Foucault, 1972). In the light of this understanding, a Support Group for Mutual Aid constitutes a discursive space where participants can negotiate their experiences and representations of self, shaping and being shaped by the interactional context as it unfolds. Departing from this view, we draw on sociointeractional approaches to the analysis of talk (Goffman, 1986a; Schiffrin, 2006; Gumperz, 1982) to examine frames, footings, and alignments in face-to-face interactions. Frames, footings, and alignments are indexes of roles enacted by participating mothers as they bring up and educate their deaf children. Frames, footings and alignments During talk, participants signal to each other how they see their actions in the immediate discursive situation or how they intend co-participants to make sense of their utterances (Tannen and Wallat, 1987, p. 205). To do it, they foreground some discourse entities, marking them as figures by unconsciously choosing an array of contextual cues (Gumperz, 1982), such as their choice of tone, register, pronouns, and other linguistic resources. Based on the given cues, participants direct their attention to the salient entities and organize their interpretation of events accordingly, creating particular effects, interpretations or evaluations of what is going on in the interaction. These effects are what we call interactional frames: Tacit messages that function like a system of premises for the interpretation of discourse (Tannen and Wallat, 1987). Goffman (1986a, pp.10-11) refers to frames as “principles of organization which govern events [...] and our subjective involvement in them.” According to him, to get at the frames that emerge moment to moment in talk, we should examine the different footings or alignments 5 participants take toward each other, their utterances, and the discursive situation. Footings arise as interactants position themselves or are positioned by others as animators, authors, and/or principals in a specific turn of talk, aligning themselves with a particular stance. While the animator is the one who speaks or gives voice to the ideas designed by an author, the principal is the one responsible for the viewpoint or position expressed by the author. Although these three participant roles often coincide in direct speech, in reported speech they signal different footings, consequently, different alignments (cf. Couper-Kuhlen, 1998; Cooren, 2010). In pursuing the interactional motivations for the use of reported speech in talk, Holt and Clift (2010) highlight Goffman’s role in throwing light on what interactants do by resorting to it: “[…] to stand in a relation of reduced personal responsibility for what they are saying” (Goffman, 1986:512). This is why footings interest us in this paper. Alignment can be thought of as some sort of unconscious, subjective solidarity among discourse participants, be it emotional, intellectual or professional. It is a “surface of agreement” or “veneer of consensus” so that an “interactional modus vivendi” is achieved (Goffman, 1959, p.9). Participants who enjoy greater power tend to sustain their projections, and their stances ultimately prevail. However, as argued by Wine (2008, pp.2-3), some alignments go beyond the veneer of consensus (they are true projections of self): “There is also a great deal of power in solidarity [...]. When it comes to solving social problems, it is often solidarity (true alignment) that brings about the greatest and most enduring social change” (page 3). We will be especially interested in examining “true alignment” as it may act upon the mothers’ understanding of their realities and open room for change. 6 Method This study qualitatively case-studies data collected along one year and a half3 as the three mothers interacted in the Support Group. The encounters were video-taped, and four hours of tape were selected for transcription based on their sound and image quality. In addition to transcriptions, field notes, informal conversations with participants, therapy reports and the second author’s own experience as the acting speech therapist contributed data that later went through crystallization (Ellingson, 2009) during our qualitative analysis. Participants The Clinic. The clinic is an academic lab school for those majoring in speech therapy at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Medical School. It takes a bilingual approach to deaf education (Hoffmeister, 2000; Ladd, 2007) and supports the development of both a visuospatial language (LIBRAS – The Brazilian Sign Language) as the child's first language (L1) and spoken Portuguese as a second language.1 The Support Group for Mutual Aid. The group is formed by fathers, mothers, grandmothers, aunts, and other caretakers responsible for the children under the Clinic's care. It meets once a week for one hour and thirty minutes and involves counseling, psychological support, and instruction toward the effective use and care of hearing aids. The group is coordinated by a psychologist, who is an interpreter of LIBRAS – the Brazilian Sign Language. During the encounters, she tries to create an informal environment, using ice breakers and a playful tone. She is also the one who selects the topics for each meeting. They vary from deafness, development, and schooling for deaf children to fears and challenges in raising these children. The Mothers and their children. Maria, Joana, and Nara4 were selected to participate in the study because of their frequent attendance at our weekly meetings. Although their 7 children (Cristiano, Miguel, and Brenda, respectively) were not physically present, they took part in the interactions as their mothers animated their thoughts and ideas, making them figures, authors, and principles of such contributions by using reported speech (direct and indirect). Details on the background of these mothers and their children follow. Maria and Cristiano. Maria has two children: a hearing-14-year-old girl and Cristiano, a 7-year-old boy with moderate hearing loss in both ears. She completed high school, has a fair knowledge of LIBRAS, and chose to stay home to be able to take Cristiano to speech therapy. She communicates with Cristiano in LIBRAS, oral Portuguese, and domestic gestures. Her active participation and interest in Cristiano's education have been crucial to his progress. His perception of the human voice and environmental sounds (slamming doors, airplanes, cars, TV at medium volume) has been developed by Auditory Stimulation, speech therapy and the use of personal communication aids. With them, he can hear speech sounds and has been successfully developing oral Portuguese as he advances in his therapy. This success also allows him to attend a regular private school since the family has a good financial situation. Joana and Miguel. Joana is the mother of a hearing 9-year-old girl and of Miguel, an 11-year-old boy with severe hearing loss, who wears hearing aids in both ears for the last 2 and ½ years. Being the family provider, Joana juggles her professional life as a teacher, domestic chores, and Miguel’s speech therapy. She not only attends the Support Group frequently but also LIBRAS classes, at the clinic and another Brazilian federal institution dedicated to the education of the deaf. Her interest in LIBRAS was motivated by the need to establish effective communication with Miguel, which she can do with low intermediary fluency. When necessary, she combines gestures and oral Portuguese to reinforce cues and meet her communicative needs. Seen as a leader by the other participants, she is constantly trading ideas with everyone and 8 appreciates every opportunity to interact with the other mothers, caregivers and learn any type of information on the education of the deaf. Her son, Miguel, can only hear high-intensity environmental sounds such as thunders and airplanes. He attends 4th.grade at a school for the hearing-impaired and shows good academic development. He has been undergoing auditory stimulation and learning lip reading. Nara and Brenda. Nara is the mother of Brenda, an 11-year-old girl with severe hearing loss. Although she has a high school education and is a public inspector for customer services in Brazil, she quitted work to provide full assistance to her daughter (which includes taking the girl to speech therapy and school). Her husband, a driver for alternative transportation services in Rio de Janeiro, provides for the family. Nara attends our encounters frequently and seems to like the activities and opportunity to trade experiences with other parents. She is very communicative and spontaneous. Similar to Joana, she enrolled in LIBRAS classes offered both by the clinic and by the Brazilian federal institution for the education of the deaf and can communicate with her daughter in LIBRAS. Brenda is a child with severe hearing loss, as we have mentioned. She started her therapy at the clinic two years before the start of this study and presents a serious language delay caused by her late use of a natural language and lack of adequate stimulation. She does not use personal communication aids because she did not adapt to them. She can only perceive very intense sounds such as fire-crackers and thunders. She speaks LIBRAS with satisfactory fluency and also resorts to domestic gestures. She is in 2nd.grade and used to go to the same private school Miguel attends, which is specialized in hearing-impaired children. The speech therapist. The speech therapist was a participant researcher and is the second author of this paper. She holds a BSc in Speech Therapy, an MA in Linguistics, and has 9 been involved with voice, oral motricity, and language development programs at the clinic. She herself has a moderate hearing loss, which was developed when she was 16 and which has led her to use hearing aids in both ears. Although she can produce oral and written Portuguese with fluency, she needs to lip-read to discriminate words and high-frequency sounds when in interactional contexts. Procedures While frames (Tannen and Wallat, 1987; Goffman, 1986a) and footings (Goffman, 1981; 1986a) allowed us to observe how emergent discursive representations related to the roles taken by participant mothers at the interactional level, contextual cues such as turn-taking, the participation structure (Phillips, 1972) and the conversational floor (Edelsky, 1981) contributed to our understanding of how these mothers negotiated such representations. Those which were common to the three mothers were coded as well as the use of reported speech. Furthermore, field notes and the second author’s participant observation were coded for cues that would allow us to establish a link between the mothers’ representations and the socio-cultural context at large. Data. Four segments of the transcription were selected for this paper; they address the following topics: (1) “Doubts about personal sound amplifiers/hearing aids and related care;” (2) “How to explain to your deaf child what it means to be deaf and what it means to be a hearer;” (3) “How to explain abstract concepts in sign language to your child;” (4) “the role of family- school-clinic in the development of the child.” Analysis and Discussion Similar to results reported by Van der Meeroop and Van der Haar (2008), Pereira (2005), and others who studied interactions in institutional contexts, an institutional or therapeutic frame remains active throughout the encounters despite the psychologist’s effort to make them 10 informal. This meta-frame underlies the communicative purpose of the meetings— to provide counseling and instruction to the participant mothers. At the same time, it positions the participants as “mothers of patients” or “recipients of instruction” who have less power in the interaction. Naturally, participant mothers do step in and out of these interactional roles as they shift to conversational, irony, and reporting frames. The lamination of these frames was slightly overridden by the reporting frame, which predominated. The conversational and joke/irony frames were equally sustained during most of the interactions in segments one, two, and three. In segment four, the conversational frame slightly predominated as the mothers enjoyed relative freedom to take turns and nominate sub- topics without the mediation of the psychologist/therapist. As they shifted frames, the mothers assumed new footings and, consequently, new interactional roles. More specifically, they enacted the roles of “animators” of their children’s ideas and “conversants” who exchange ideas about common problems that they know well and can talk about with authority. The institutional frame The institutional purpose overrides other contextual cues; as such, it sustains the therapeutic frame and leads participant mothers to remain a considerable amount of time in the role of “mothers of patients” or “clients.” This frame is characterized by the psychologist and or participant researcher’s control of the conversational floor. They nominate the topic, counsel, and sum up the experiences, exercising their institutional roles: They are in charge of supervising and monitoring the use of and process of adaptation to the hearing aids as well as the family’s participation in the children’s development. Consequently, they not only hold the floor for great lengths of time in all segments but also control the topics, how they are opened and closed and who speaks. Mothers, for their turn, take short turns in response to the psychologist’s